A sweetly familiar rhythm, indeed.
No. Not possible. Once more he was luckier than any soul upon the tired earth could possibly be—or creeping age had decided to swallow him whole, and he was hallucinating after a last paroxysm of violence.
The whispering speed impelled him to the heart of the trap-passages, and a single breath of clean, fresh outside air swept past, pushed by some vagary of atmosphere or physics.
And upon it rode a trace of lovely warm fragrance, musk and tenderness, silken hair and large, mistrustful gold-threaded eyes. A hint of burning, a splash of cold rainwater, and the wicked warm honey of arousal, whether fear or something else.
He burst from the entrance into a tangle of vines, underbrush, and trees tossing their arms as the night combed a dark, gorge-ridden mountainside. A convulsive movement broke the greiben in his hands, for at the edge of a small clearing a familiar shape stood, head upflung like a startled doe, her curls lifting in a bewitching, shining mass and a green gem upon her breast.
Her scent burst upon him again, stripping away creeping numbness. Lukas was suddenly aware of half-frozen water sluicing from the sky, the mountain whistling and rushing as it bathed.
Beatrice’s lush, tender mouth moved slightly. The Gift burned in her, the grace and control of sanguinant merely polishing what had existed before. She whirled, plunging into the trees, a dryad surprised in primeval forest.
Lukas dropped the crushed rag of last, hapless greiben, and bolted after her.
CHAPTER 29
Being chased through the woods was a common nightmare, sure. Zipping between trees with that strange flickering speed, wrenching herself aside as trunks or giant granite boulders reared before her, leaping like Supergirl—all that was new, and so was the terrible dilating pain in her throat, the dry ache returned with a vengeance.
One moment she’d been staring at the black, rumbling hole in the hillside, alternating waves of hot and cold flashing all through her. The next, that immense growl halted and Lukas resolved out of thin air, his suit torn to ribbons, thick dark splatters dripping from arms and legs, holding one of the nasty little green henchmen casually as a struggling kitten.
There was no sound behind her save the wind and mounting waves of raindrops piercing the forest canopy, but her back crawled with that instinctive sense of invisible eyes following every move. The terror was immense, red-tinged, vying with the pain in her throat.
The thirst.
Hiking eastward on the mountain had taken quite a while, but it seemed like only a few seconds later she burst from a line of trees just past the leaning wreck of the stable, sneakers brushing softly instead of smacking in mud. The rain was silver curtains loaded with ice; sheer unthinking desperation, beating behind her heart like a second pulse, pelted her for the house.
Boarded windows, locked doors, the porch shuddered as she leapt onto it and hesitated, skidding…
…and a warm living weight hit her from behind, driving them both through the front door with its beveled glass insets, still whole despite abandonment.
Or it had been. The entire doorway shattered, splinters and shards flung across the foyer; somehow Lukas’s arms were around her; he turned and took the impact on his shoulder, a half-familiar movement. She barely had a heartbeat to realize he must have done the same thing in the elevator before they tumbled, rolling, all the way across the foyer, ending at the foot of the stairs.
Disuse, neglect, mildew—the house reeked of all those things. Under the sad rotting smell an uninhabited structure quickly acquired was familiarity, from the ghost of floor polish to the even fainter trace of Jared, and a tinge Bea almost didn’t recognize as her own preferred laundry detergent and the perfume she’d discovered in college.
Memories crowded her, a flood she managed to keep dammed during waking hours. Her own voice, sharp and needling or sarcastically dismissive.
Can you take Snowball out? I’m doing the goddamn bills...do you always have to make everything weird...it’s raccoon tracks, or something...I guess I’ll come stay for a little while...Jesus Christ, don’t listen to everything Don says…
The warm, heavy weight was on top of her, and Lukas inhaled harshly. His cheek had ended up pressed to hers, a rasp of stubble, and more frightening than the strength in his fingers or the deep growl something human-sized shouldn’t have been able to produce was the fact that he wasn’t crushing her, and his fingers around her right wrist didn’t squeeze. He simply held that arm pinned, the rest of him stretched over her, and Bea froze.
Oh, shit.
He was sniffing, she realized. Great deep gulps, and both of them were soaked clean through. In his case it was probably a good thing, because the guck he’d been covered with was unpleasantly acrid; she probably didn’t smell too fresh either, after being drenched, drip-dried, then hiking through the goddamn woods in yet more pouring sleet.
The growl petered out, but he stayed atop her. Bea didn’t dare move, she hardly dared breathe. The curious stillness was expectant instead of peaceful, the last moments before a thunderstorm breaking.
“Beatrice.” The same lingering over each syllable of her name. He shuddered, a wave passing through his much larger frame, and at the end of the movement his knee was between hers. “You are...unhurt. That is good.”
It’s probably gonna change in the next few seconds. Staying frozen was hard work, especially when he moved again, his knee sliding up, and she felt a very familiar insistent probing against her thigh, prodding through his ruined trousers and her wet, clinging jeans. Oh, hell.
“The door unlocked,” she managed, in a husky little whisper. It sounded less terrified, and more...provocative, since the thirst was torment-teasing again. A terrible dry need hit her sideways, swamping her entire body, filling the deepest pit of her belly with molten heat. “I s-swear it wasn’t me, the door unlocked and I…”
She wanted monster blood, she realized. His blood. The swimming lassitude, the deep warmth—it was like needing chocolate once a month, or the salt cravings at infrequent intervals.
Do bloodsuckers have periods? Why did her brain rabbit-jump everywhere, why couldn’t she think of something useful? And why, oh God why, did she cry when she was terrified? Her eyes were full of hot welling water.
“Yes.” As if he’d expected it, but did he believe her? “I suspect so. And yet.”
